Audio Archive

Today, a small thought on free downloads in general. While I specifically stated in my introduction that I will share music that has "expressedly published under a license that will allow" anyone "to legally copy and distribute the music" or, while I have not stated it but seems logically linked, that has fallen or released into the public domain.

I'll make one exception — music that has been published in the audio section of the Internet Archive. Here the following rules apply:

• If it has been published with a license that would make it eligible for inclusion in the blog based on my free music criterium no further rules need apply. (Sounds circular a bit but that's half-witted legalese by an amateur/hellip;)
• If it has been published as part of the Community Audio collection I will share it as a free download but I will make it clear that it's for personal use only, that is unless it has been published with a license allowing sharing.^[1]
• Everything else that I might feel worthy or interesting will be featured for streaming only. (Again, unless there is a license attached that allows me to share it based on my rules.)

I hope that you can accept that addition to my own rules. To better understand this decision let me explain. The Internet Archive has declared as is general mission that it "is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we [the Internet Archive] provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, the print disabled, and the general public." It's content is thus meant for the general public and generally its use is encouraged. The Internet Archive invites everyone "to view or upload audios to the Community collection." You may of course only upload contents that you have the right to share.

Thus I feel free to share basically anything for streaming as this (strictly personal) use is sanctioned by the declared mission and I feel free to share anything from Community Audio as it was originally set up and is still primarily used to Creative Commons and public domain publications even though it is possible to upload material for personal use only.

The primary reason for me to limit music on this blog to licenses that allow sharing is to make sure that no copyright law is broken. The scrutiny that the Internet Archive experiences (as one of the top 1000 websites in the world^[2]) and its declared mission grants me some leverage to share its contents.


^[1] Community: A New Name for "Open Source" Collections on Internet Archive Blogs, 8^th March 2011.
^[2] As of today, 8^th June 2013, the domain archive.org is ranked by Alexa with 258, and by SimilarWeb with 974.